Today, The Chicago Tribune published an
editorial praising Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s education reform package
recently signed into law, which expanded the Student Scholarships for
Educational Excellence Program statewide.
In “Momentum for
School Choice,” the Tribune Editorial
Board writes:
The Bayou State is part of a "Top this!" competition among
many states to open public schools to competition. Indiana has set up an
expansive voucher program that covers students in families that have incomes below
$61,000 a year. Wisconsin has expanded school choice programs in Milwaukee and
Racine. Ohio will give tuition vouchers to as many as 60,000 students by 2013.
And Illinois? Left in the dust.
A bill that would have offered private school tuition support to as many
as 30,000 Chicago kids came close to passing a couple of years ago. The latest
version is languishing in the Senate assignments committee.
And that’s not the
first time the Tribune Editorial
Board advocated vouchers. In July 2011,
the editorial board wrote:
Major school reforms are unspooling in as many as a dozen states,
including Illinois. These laws bring the promise of a transformation just as
dramatic as — forgive us — anything that Decepticons could manage. (Ask your
kids.)
It starts with giving parents more options about where their children
can go to school.
The American Federation for Children, a Washington D.C.-based school
choice advocacy group, dubs 2011 "The year of school choice."
But Chicago isn't the
only place where newspapers are taking notice of the importance of voucher
programs.
